China holds key to Korean resolution

Updated
April 08, 2013 10:59:00

There's intense speculation in the United States about whether the North Korean leader is posturing or preparing for actual conflict but there's a growing sense that it's China that offers the best hope of diffusing the crisis and deterring North Korea from taking the conflict beyond the point of no return.

TONY EASTLEY: In the United States there's intense speculation about whether the North Korean leader is posturing or preparing for actual conflict, and while America has the most powerful military in the world, there is a growing sense that it's China that offers the best hope of deterring North Korea from doing something stupid.

North America correspondent Jane Cowan reports.

JANE COWAN: The US might have seen it all before, but North Korea's brinkmanship is still dominating discussion.

TELEVISION PERSONALITY II: More than once wars have started by accident, and this is... this is very serious...

TELEVISION PERSONALITY III: I think we have to convince this new, young, inexperienced leader that he is playing a losing hand.

JANE COWAN: The consensus is that one country holds the key to defusing the tension on the Korean Peninsula.

TELEVISION PERSONALITY IV: Now I blame the Chinese more than anybody else. They could determine the fate of North Korea better than anybody on the planet.

TELEVISION PERSONALITY V: The Chinese hold a lot of the cards here.

JANE COWAN: The former ambassador to China and one-time Republican presidential hopeful, Jon Huntsman, makes the same assessment.

JON HUNTSMAN: This is a huge opening, believe me, with China. As I've watched the ratcheting up of frustration amongst the Chinese leaders over the last many years, they probably have hit the 212 degree boiling point, as it relates to North Korea.

JON HUNSTMAN: Well they have economic leverage. Does the North listen to that? No, they lie and they cheat as it relates to China as well.

JANE COWAN: Underlying the current crisis is the creeping threat of nuclear proliferation, especially as the latest round of talks with Iran ended with negotiators unable to agree even on a date for the next meeting.

The former UN ambassador, Bill Richardson, has visited North Korea eight times - most recently this year.

BILL RICHARDSON: What you don't want is North Korea selling enriched uranium to Iran. And I remember asking a North Korean leader, I said, are you guys exporting nuclear materials? He said, maybe. If you continue sanctions we've got to get foreign exchange.

JANE COWAN: But it's far from clear that China is willing to exert maximum pressure on North Korea.

Brett Stephens is a foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

BRETT STEPHENS: I think they've had a conviction for a very long time that a reunified South Korea is a disaster for them. So they are going to prop up this regime for a long time.

JANE COWAN: After sending nuclear-capable B-52s to the skies and antimissile ships to the waters around the Korean peninsula, America is now sending John Kerry, the secretary of state, due to visit China, South Korea and Japan this week.